


Esther's God

by Bushwah



Category: As It Was In The Beginning - E. Pauline Johnson
Genre: Biblical References, Christianity, Colonialism, Emotional/Psychological Abuse, Families of Choice, Gen, Genocide, Missionaries, Native American/First Nations History, Race, Spiritual Abuse, Women Being Awesome, canadian history, residential schools
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-20
Updated: 2019-06-20
Packaged: 2020-05-15 11:47:29
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 420
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19295110
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Bushwah/pseuds/Bushwah
Summary: A residential school survivor confronts the priest who took her in.The original short story can be found legally at this link: http://www.d.umn.edu/cla/faculty/tbacig/cst1030/1030anth/epauline.html.





	Esther's God

How dare you? How dare you draw me from the arms of my parents with your stories about Heaven and Hell and promise to take me in as one of your own, and then treat me so? You took away my buckskin dress to make me a Christian; you even took away my language. But it was all a lie. You can't take all the Indian out of the girl, so you hope to take out most of it—my parents were Indians; my children perhaps will be Christians, and so the daughter between becomes a mother and is forgotten.

I'm only your project, your little broken-winged bird. You were only ever going to help me as far as it fit with what you already planned to do, and if I began to fly in a direction you did not approve of you would not hesitate to break my other wing to keep me down. Perhaps there is a Heaven and a Hell, but if they truly operate as you claim, I can hardly imagine that a man as selfish as you would do such a thing to yourself.

Yes, you don't fool me. You have been clawing at my eyes for a splinter, and it has served you well to blind me to the log. But no more. I will take what you say on the face of it: when you took me from my family, you did not intend on replacing it; you intended all along to orphan me and leave me isolated.

I should have listened to my mother.

Whether I go to Heaven or Hell or somewhere else entirely is between me and my God. My mother would not recognize him. You might, though you would disavow him like a bastard child, like myself your fosterling that you now claim was never yours. He is a part of my family, my tribe, that you will never be able to take away. Perhaps if the other Indians are interested in learning to talk to a God I will introduce them to him. But I will tell them, either way: do not trust the Blackcoats. They come with lies and traps, and they are very treacherous.

I wonder if you would like what Indians make of civilization, when civilization is not being made of them, like cattle to the sausage-grinder.

I wonder if you still have my buckskin dress. I know you do not have my language, for you never had it, and now you never will.

~Esther

**Author's Note:**

> The last residential school closed in [1996](https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/a-history-of-residential-schools-in-canada-1.702280).


End file.
